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JACK TRAMIEL

The foundef of Commodore computer ####

|--> Łódź, Polonia 13-12-1928
-->| Palo Alto California 08-04-2012

History:
Tramiel was born in 1928 in Łódź, Poland. After the Nazi invasion in 1939, his family was transported to the ghetto in Łódź, where he worked in a trouser factory. When the ghettos were liquidated, his family was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. He was examined by Dr. Josef Mengele and chosen for a work team, after which he and his father were sent to the Alum labor camp near Hanover, while his mother remained in Auschwitz. His father died of typhus in the labor camp like many others, although Tramiel always believed that he was killed with an injection of diesel fuel. Tramiel was rescued in April 1945 by the Americans.

In November 1947, Tramiel emigrated to the United States and enlisted in the Army where he learned to repair office tools, such as typewriters. In 1953, working as a cab driver, he bought a repair shop in the Bronx, calling it the Commodore Portable Typewriter. He began importing typewriters from Europe, and in 1955, to circumvent import restrictions, he founded the Toronto-based Commodore Business Machines. During the 1960s, the Japanese began to build low-cost typewriters, and Commodore could no longer compete in that market. Commodore's main investor, Irving Gould, sent Tramiel to Japan to find out how to compete with them, but when he returned, he had a new idea.

In the 1970s he began working on electronic calculators, and in the early years Commodore became a major supplier of calculators based on Texas Instruments' chipsets. In 1975, Texas Instruments also entered the market for low-priced calculators, cutting out many competitors. Tramiel then set out to find a chip manufacturer that could guarantee a supply for the future. The choice fell on MOS Technology, a small company in Pennsylvania, which was in financial trouble. MOS was purchased in 1976, becoming part of Commodore. One of the engineers employed at MOS was Chuck Peddle, the man who designed the 6502 chip. Peddle convinced Tramiel that calculators were products that had had their day and that computers would take their place. Peddle showed him a prototype using the 6502, the KIM-1.
KIM, a new video chip, 4kB of RAM, and a version of Microsoft's BASIC were put inside a case that included a monitor and a cassette player. This is how the PET 2001 was born. At a price of $599, it was a big hit, especially in schools. Although Peddle left the company in 1980, improvements were made. In 1980 a new graphics chip with elementary color support allowed Commodore to produce the Commodore VIC 20, which was also a great success. In 1982, with a new graphics chip and more memory, the Commodore 64 (C64) was born. It quickly became the world's most popular computer, with 22 million units sold.

Texas Instruments was also in the computer market, and it seemed that Tramiel wanted revenge on them for that old calculator thing: he started a new price war to knock them out of business. The C64 dropped in price from $595 to $199. Sales continued to rise, as did profits.

Tramiel's personal finances were sufficient to buy a company like Atari####, excluding the video game division, which became Atari Games. Atari, once the "wonder son" of Silicon Valley, was one of the illustrious victims of the great failure of video games in 1983, during which the owner Warner Communications was forced to sell it. Tramiel attempted to turn Atari into the 'new Commodore', and decided like most companies to ignore the video game market. This turned out to be a mistake, as the market soon flourished thanks to Nintendo's arrival on the US market. Tramiel focused almost exclusively on the computer market, producing the Atari ST line. The main competitor was the Commodore Amiga.

Although it was quite successful, the ST line was later replaced with one consisting of IBM PC-compatible. By 1984, its sales revenue exceeded $1 billion.

Sources:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Tramiel